Ajedrez y TDAH, a Spanish project that develops chess as an educational intervention for children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), has been voted as the clear winner of the Best Social Chess Project competition by the attendees of the Chess and Society conference. Project leader Luis Blasco de la Cruz has received the award and £500 from Malcolm Pein, CEO of Chess in Schools and Communities (CSC).

Ajedrez y TDAH is linked to Universidad Europea Madrid, the Hospital General de Collado Villalba, the ADHD Organisations APDE SIERRA, CADE and Fundación Activa as well as the Erasmus Plus-sponsored CASTLE project. 64 Villalba Chess Club is developing the program and Madrid Chess Academy is training teachers and giving the option to carry the Project to another places outside Madrid.Luis is working on a manual for teachers and is available to train teachers in Spanish or English as well as to consult on adding and adapting a module on ADHD to teacher training programmes abroad.

The competition was part of the first Social Chess Entrepreneurship Bootcamp that was held before and during the conference thanks to grants by the European Chess Union and CSC. Social chess entrepreneurs from nine countries heard lectures and took part in workshops.

The trainers were Johanna Valentin on business plan, Mike Truran on project proposals and pitching, Bob Kane on sponsoring and sponsor relations, Gabriel Fernandez Bobadilla on capital management, John Adams on (social) return on investment and Andrea Schmidbauer on social media marketing. Bob, Johanna and Mike were also jurors and heard the participants´ project presentations. As they found all projects valuable and promising, the jurors had a hard job to pick three finalists to present to the conference audience. The bootcamp participants gave each other feedback and helped the finalists to polish the versions that were finally delivered.

It is hoped that the experience and initial interest from additional sponsors will lead to a repetition at the London Chess Conference 2016.